Embracing Silence: Finding My Voice Through Loss
As an adult looking back on my deafness, I realise now that it was a traumatic experience—not just for me, but especially for my parents. Even today, more than four decades later, I can still see the tears well up in my father’s eyes when he speaks about it. Their pain never left. My hearing loss wasn’t just a change in my life; for them, it was a heartbreak, a wound that never fully healed.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time trying to reassure them that I was okay—that I had survived, even thrived. I wanted them to see that I’d gone on to live, to dream, to achieve. I hoped to ease their worry, to lift the heavy sense of guilt I could feel lingering between us. Yet, even now, when they recount the moment they first learned I was deaf, I can sense the shame they still carry. It’s as if they believe they failed me somehow—an invisible burden they’ve never been able to set down.
It wasn’t until much later—after I experienced my own losses, including a miscarriage—that I truly began to understand what they had gone through. I blamed myself in much the same way they had. The guilt. The helplessness. The silent ache of grief. Through my own pain, I finally saw theirs with new eyes. I could hold space for their sorrow with compassion instead of frustration.
Now, when I listen to them speak about those early days, I don’t try to fix it. I simply witness. I understand that their pain stems from love and from the powerlessness of not being able to protect their child. No words or reassurances can undo that kind of wound. Healing, I’ve come to learn, is something they must seek in their own way.
For me, self-acceptance came gradually. Only in the last five years have I truly embraced my deafness—not as a limitation or a source of shame, but as a vital part of who I am. In fact, I now see it as a gift. Without it, I may never have discovered the spiritual world I feel so deeply connected to today. My deafness allowed me to hear in a different way—to listen not with my ears, but with my soul.
In the silence, I found a new voice. One that speaks to the unseen, that reaches beyond the physical and into the spiritual. My deafness opened a doorway into a realm I never would have accessed otherwise. And so, strangely, I am thankful. What once felt like a loss became a sacred beginning. It taught me that what we perceive as our greatest obstacles may, in fact, lead us to our deepest truth.
And now, I hold space for others in the way I once needed someone to hold space for me.
Whether they’re moving through grief, illness, change, or quiet heartbreaks no one else can see, I meet them in their silence. I don’t rush to fill it or fix it. I honour it. I recognise that ache — the invisible weight of carrying something alone. And I know that sometimes, the most healing thing we can offer another person is not a solution, but presence.
Because silence is not empty.
It is where the truth lives.
It is where we begin again.
